Andrew Bailey, the outgoing co-deputy director of the FBI, said his decision to leave the bureau was driven entirely by a need to return home to Missouri and raise his four young children, forcefully rejecting suggestions that internal turmoil played any role in his departure.
In an exclusive interview, Bailey said the move was «100% about my need to get home and raise my four small children,» adding, «I love my kids.» He accused some news outlets of spreading «lies» about his reasons for leaving and offered a firm defense of FBI Director Kash Patel amid scrutiny of the bureau's leadership.
«Any accusation that Director Patel has focused on anything other than fulfilling the president's promise to make America safe again are bold-faced lies,» Bailey said. «We wake up every day and work early every morning and stay up late, oftentimes without sleep, to ensure mission accomplishment.»
Bailey announced his departure after just over a year at the bureau. He had left his post as Missouri attorney general to join the FBI in 2025. Patel said in his own statement that Bailey was leaving to return to his family in Missouri and praised his role in the FBI's overhaul, saying Bailey had helped institute «critical reforms» and thanking him for answering the call to serve.
Bailey said protecting children had been central to his work as Missouri attorney general and remained a priority at the FBI. According to Bailey, the bureau added 55 agents to child protection efforts and increased the number of victim service providers in field offices nationwide. During field office reviews, he said he pressed staff on whether the bureau was «fulfilling our moral and legal obligation for victim notification and quality victim services,» calling the FBI's victim services program «top-notch.»
He portrayed his time in Washington as part of what he called a «truly historic transformation» of federal law enforcement under President Donald Trump and Patel. He credited the administration's creation of homeland security task forces and its designation of Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations with helping law enforcement pursue its mission. He also said the FBI had made it easier for state, tribal and local officers to join its task forces, adding more than 2,000 task force officers in a year.
Bailey pointed to what he described as a 20% reduction in homicides, more than 5,000 violent offenders arrested by the FBI and thousands of child victims identified and rescued as evidence that the administration's approach is working. He said the bureau had seized 3,258 kilograms of fentanyl in one year and arrested more than 4,200 members of foreign terrorist organizations. He cited 11,000 child victims located and identified, without specifying a time period for those latter two figures.
Asked what the public might misunderstand about the FBI, Bailey described the scale of an agency with roughly 38,000 employees and 11,000 armed agents, charged with both criminal investigations and national security work. He said the leadership team had pushed resources from headquarters to field offices, where agents could have a greater impact. More than 1,500 positions had been shifted from headquarters to field offices, he said, and reducing layers of approval allowed agents to follow leads more quickly. He said the FBI processed more than 1.8 million DNA samples and reduced its backlog to zero for the first time in bureau history.
Asked about political considerations at the FBI, Bailey said protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution were «the only considerations.» When asked how he protected agents' ability to follow the facts, he pointed to those staffing and approval changes. He did not address whether he had seen politics influence a specific investigation or personnel decision.
He rejected criticism of Patel's approach as resistance to change inside an organization accustomed to the status quo. Bailey alleged that the FBI had previously been «weaponized» against Trump and his family and said Patel wanted to return it to its core mission of protecting Americans and upholding the Constitution. «That is going to anger those sacred guardians of the status quo,» Bailey said.
As for what comes next, Bailey said he expects to return to public service someday, though he did not name a role. He traced a career that took him from the Army and two deployments to Iraq through Missouri state government and the FBI before returning to the reason he is leaving now.